Faith.

I have given this topic much thought, since this morning when I asked to and decided to write about it. I keep getting images of Valley Forge in my head, or Robert Bartlett, captain of the doomed vessel The Karluk, that was crushed in ice-filled waters, who walked over 700 miles of ice, to return with help for the survivors. To me I guess faith registers as belief in the core of the self over the elements, and their actions to dissaude you from being, whether those elements are external or internal. Depressions in the weather or the soul, social climate or violent situations no matter heir source. My faith always seems to stem from preparation, instinct and/or educated guesses, but something also tells me that the essence of faith is what tugs you on across that ice, the sunlight that makes the plant turn, promotes the child's barbaric yell when it is in need of sustenance, physical and otherwise. Faith is the flag that is raised at the center , the eye of the storm as it were, the idea that colossal peace may be found , not necessarily stilling the storm, but navigating it well, staying keen to the middle, until solutions are wrought from that inner stillness.

I have read that one's champion to their faith, is their significant other, the one you choose to spend your life with reflects the comfort and love that is faith as partners pledge to one another to provide that safe place for the other physically and spiritually, in a hectic, harsh world. We usually seek what is missing from our selves when we chose someone, the need to give or protect, the need to be protected, characteristics in the other reflect our greatest missing pieces, the last God-sized chunk , stolen from the center of the existence -puzzle. Yes, stolen. When a snake taunted Eve, some say, and we were unhooked from God, or that rebel angels fornicated with humans and the priceless connection was lost, or that aliens either dropped us here or did as rebel angels would when in Rome and we never had any relationship with any deity. We seek with our remourseful hands raised, not sure of our crime beyond the ancestral superstition that we failed so harshly that our own maker gave us pain and silence and even death, to quell its heartache with us. Whatever we think we know, we're sure it all went awry beyond our control, we were victims of abandonment, lost and lowly in this dry plain of atonement.Man and its catastrophic need for drama made crawling out of a pond of ooze a little too boring, and Darwin a hapless interloper in the cogs of our desperate workings of calling down a God to our lost selves, divine intervention should fall like so many apples. Miracles should bless the faithful with not so random winning lottery tickets, and not be wasted convincing the faithless with the face of a messiah lingering in the lumpy form of a potato.When we choose our partners, we do so wanting them to love us best, to manifest here, right smack in front of us the attention that was torn from our primal state. We ask a lot of them, because we are fitting them with the trappings of our deepest unknown longing, we rarely find anyone that can buoy up under the weight of our cookie cutter need - harness with any real immediacy , which can be an insidiously demanding task, but if the chosen do love us to the best of their ability,( whilst seeking to soothe their own catastrophic divine needs in us), there will be much understanding, patience and continuous pledging and in essence .. work,tugging at the yoke, to build up that tower of faith in between the two beings. Reaching up, will be reaching out, and finally in.

I believe we choose our parents before we are born, for the next set of lessons we can be dealt by their individual strengths and weaknesses, that they are the initial filter on the lenses, that we decide we need to focus and be guided by, or over come. Remember , they chose each other inside of their own longings first, by studying them and their interaction, we can know them more thoroughly and in turn know ourselves as not so wanton a creature.

Lots of religions are based on reward, and actually receiving the love we feel is missing in a place we can't even see, as if this plain is travelling the 700 miles of ice and Heaven is the Oasis.The faith in getting there, to that Nirvana as it were, varies widely in acts of conviction here on Earth. Those acts could entail killing, martyrdom, inflicting self-pain, drug use, philanthropy , prayer, etc. Accepted acts and acts considered blasphemous, the individual decides which is which. Perhaps we should stop atoning, stop succouring our faithlessness in the faithlessness of others and ask ourselves what is really wanted of us, to achieve (not receive) such ecstasies? Are we crying out so loudly from our collective crib, that we don't even hear the lullaby proffered? Most likely. Do we notice how our partners stretch our souls, and attempt to console us with a genuine effort to be the portal to the softest center of our most personal storm?

Faith is the footprints leading away from ancient guilt. Faith is the idea that the illusion will fall away sooner or later. Faith is the journey. Hope is the indispensable lamp, the life mate of faith. Love is the reward we never really lost, we just forgot which pocket it was in

i have to tell you pen ....you WRITE LIKE AN OLD POET...YOU HAVE AN OLD SOUL.....
i love to read poetry and write it. ...lemme tell ya YOU...know how to write ....you write so complicated it takes me forever to read your posts sometimes and I THINK THATS GREAT. ...
please take it as a HUGE compliment. ...never stop writing.

Wow.. Thank you Majik, I take all of what you just said as the most wonderful compliment. Thank you for taking the time to read, I thought it was prolly just too much and no one would say anything. THANK YOU!!*hugs*

thanks guys